Preparing for Your Future: Why CTE?

Why CTE?

The case is this: in order for students to succeed, we need to prepare them for the ever-changing world of work, which means not only college readiness, but career readiness—students with access to postsecondary education and skills attainment possibilities that will prepare them to achieve in the 21st century.

We ask the question, “Why Career and Technical Education?” with honesty. Why, among the many competing education demands, student needs, and graduation requirements, does a program that has its foundations in the 1917 Smith-Hughes Act hold relevancy still? Between emphases on early learning to college preparation, where does Career and Technical Education (CTE) fit in and merit consideration? Why should students who barely have an opportunity to explore the arts, health and fitness, or social studies, be directed to courses in aerospace manufacturing, horticulture, financial math, sports medicine, or integrated science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)?

The answer to the above questions, we believe, is that CTE offers a unique opportunity to engage students in an enormous variety of subjects, incorporating academic, creative and technical skills, with the specific goal, nowhere else represented in education, of preparing students for all of life that comes after high school.

CTE needs to be an integral part of every student’s education so that all students graduate from high school globally competitive for work, prepared for postsecondary education, and ready for life as positive, contributing members of society in the 21st century. With CTE, students succeed.